Since the terrorist attack on Israel in the morning hours of October 7, American Jews have been glued to the news–American broadcasts, English-language newspapers, and social media–but can we fully comprehend what Israelis are going through while living in the diaspora? Join author Daniel Gordis, Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College and creator of the Substack “Israel from the Inside” and Moment Book and Opinion Editor Amy E. Schwartz, as they discuss what non-Hebrew speakers don’t always get about what’s happening in Israel and share insights into the country’s soul and future.
______________________________________
CONNECT WITH MOMENT
Website: https://momentmag.com/
Facebook: momentmag
X (Twitter): momentmagazine
Instagram: moment_mag
Pinterest: momentmag
______________________________________
Moment Magazine was founded in 1975 by Elie Wiesel & Leonard Fein. Now led by Nadine Epstein, today’s Moment is home to award-winning multimedia journalism and innovative programs that reaches more than 1.5 million people. https://momentmag.com/
Now for today’s program Daniel gordis is correct distinguished fellow at Shala College in Jerusalem he is the author of 13 books and the widely read blog and podcast Israel from the inside his book Israel a concise history of a Nation reborn received the 2016 National Jewish
Book of the Year award his writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times the new Republic and time among many others his most recent book impossible takes longer 75 years after its creation has Israel fulfilled its founder dreams was published earlier this year in 2014 the
Jerusalem Post listed Daniel as one of the world’s 50 most influential Jews Amy e Schwarz is moment Magazine’s opinion and book editor as well as editor of the Magazine’s popular ask the rabbi section before coming to moment Amy was a longtime editorial writer and oped columnist at the Washington Post
Where she was not nominated for a poer prize in commentary Amy is president of the non-denominational Jewish study center in Washington DC and is editor of the book can robots be Jewish and other pressing questions of Modern Life please welcome Daniel gordis and Amy e Schwarz Daniel Professor gordes um I’m so
Pleased to speak with you um and I hope everything in Israel is going what do we say now as well as can be expected that’s what we say yes well thank you very much Amy for having me it’s really an honor and a privilege and I look forward to our
Conversation that’s um so um as Suzanne said you are the distinguished author of many books but the real reason I wanted to have this conversation um was because I’ve been reading Israel from the inside your uh Suzanne called it a Blog and a podcast I I wasn’t sure I could call it
A Blog it’s you call it a Blog a substack or a Blog whatever and there’s some clips embedded in there and um I I find it really just gripping reading um particularly when the uh the the clippings that you include from from from the news and from you know Israeli
Uh commentary and com comedy with um where your team I guess takes Israeli Hebrew language news and and takes the trouble to add English subtitles so we can actually sort of listen in um and uh you know I as I think is partly part of your purpose is you it gives both a
Great sense of immediacy to the American viewer and also a sense of of how how difficult it is to you know of distance so I wonder would you start by sort of sharing how you came to uh launch this project and what the what the need was
And you know what it’s what it’s all about why why Israel from the inside sure thanks for asking um the need and the nature of the project and I think the purpose of the project have changed dramatically since it started well we can talk about when it started
When it started it was March of 20 March of 21 May of 21 May of 2021 I had read about substack a little bit in the New York Times actually I never heard of it and then I heard that Andrew Sullivan had had a little bit of a Kur
Fuffle with I think it was New York Magazine he used to work for and he announced I’m done with New York Magazine I’m gonna go on to substack and that’s gonna be my full-time job and I read that I get okay what’s substack and I googled it I thought okay then there
Was a fascinating article in the New York Times about a woman who writes a subsect that I still get uh called letters from an American and she’s a professor if I’m not mistaken at Boston College this was during the Trump era she’s aine by the way oh really she’s
Unbelievably talented writer and very gifted analyst and she was writing for people like herself who didn’t have phds in political science in other words she was writing she said mostly for women although I’m sure by now it’s read by everybody um people her age you know not young people but people that would
Actually read a kind of a not a long form essay but certainly longer than a tweet and she was trying to give people a way of understanding what was happening in the Trump America by giving them context you know here’s how issue X used to be handled here’s how issu y
Would normally be handled she was clearly not a trump fan that was pretty obvious but I thought she was very fair and it was fascinating and then they talked a little bit about how her thing had taken off and I was like I really got to check this suback thing out now
In early 21 uh we were still in the tail end of covid and prior to covid hitting I used to go to the states about 11 times a year uh to speak to do work for shalam college it was usually an amalgam and that kind of kept my finger in the
American Jewish pie a little bit and so therefore when books would come out I had a kind of a way of beginning to spread the word but then Co hit I stopped traveling completely and I realized by the way that even when covid was over I didn’t want to go back back
To 11 times a year I just wasn’t that young anymore and it was exhausting um we have grandchildren well then we had all of our grandchildren in America now we have some there some here we wanted to be very helpful here uh but then I
Began to ask myself um well what am I going to do I had this book Brewing this book called impossible takes longer uh which was supposed to come out for Israel’s 75th Anniversary which was supposed to be this great celebration we didn’t quite know about judicial reform
We didn’t quite know about October 7th obviously um and I was actually thinking about what should I do and I thought you know what I read about this Sullivan guy and I read about this woman who’s this very successful professor at Boston College maybe I’ll do a substack and I
Had done a thing online a long time ago and they I had downloaded the list of you know the email list which was some number of thousands of people and I thought you know I can upload that I’d already checked you can upload that list and start and not from scratch do you
Want to give one sentence for the anyone who maybe doesn’t know what substack is um yeah so substack is actually a publishing platform um you can check it out I I I I imagine by this point there’s thousands of people who write on substack Barry Weiss writes on substack
And is unbelievably successful Andrew Sullivan writes on substack and is unbelievably successful and then they’re Mortals like me you know who write on substack and uh you know we do our little thing and I thought you know it’s very it’s very convenient you can’t control a lot about the formats
Everything comes out looking pretty nice because they’ve set up the format and whatever and I said to myself that’s probably a good way to go since it’s still the tale end of Co and I want to get the word out about the book should start writing and what I really wanted
To do though was not join the Pyon that was basically politics and conflict there’s just so much being written about politics and conflict and I don’t think anybody falls in love with Israel certainly I don’t think anybody that that made Aliyah came here because they fell in
Love with the politics or the conflict they came despite the politics and despite the conflict and then the question became well what did you fall in love with what what what’s the the what’s in The Ether what’s in the air that is so unbelievably compelling and
To me it was really the what I call the Mosaic of Israeli life people who have different views about all sorts of things the way in which literature interacts with history interacts with poetry interacts with music and that is reflected in an oped uh just a whole civilization that really doesn’t come
Across in even the very very excellent English language press that there is there’s just too much and when I get and M say on Shabbat on Friday after Friday they come on Friday obviously not Shabbat I mean we’re talking about something that is just as thick as the
Sunday New York Times I mean literally so to go through all of that is a full day’s work on Shabbat and um there’s a lot in there that just you know Times of Israel and jpost and haret and moment and forward and great Publications just can’t dig that deep um and I thought
Wouldn’t it be fun to kind of a give up a window or a lens onto the Israeli Soul by talking about what it is that Israelis are really talking about if there just an oped translate the uped or summarize the uped something that’s not going to be in Times of Israel we’re not
Going to get covered in moment just because it’s just off the main track a little bit but that I think is really you know super important um so I kept thinking okay I’ll do that and then I said no nobody’s going to read that and then I kept saying okay today I’m going
To do it and then I’d say nobody nobody’s going to do it so May 21 comes around and there’s a thing going on in the Temple Mount I don’t know if you remember and Israel had put Security on the Temple Mount and Hamas very much in the news these days announced if you
Don’t take your security off the Temple Mount we’re going to launch rockets at Jerusalem so I kind of laughed yeah right you’re going to launch BR as at Jerusalem and I was heading out for a bike ride and I put on my helmet I was bringing the bike outside and my wife
Said where you going and I said I’m going for a ride and she said you’re going for a ride you been listening to the news I said they’re not going to do that relax she goes well do you have ID with you I said yeah she goes okay good
So when you got killed they’ll no to call me so I kind of completely forgot about it and um I went on one of my regular rides and then I was coming back up the last Hill to Jerusalem and I didn’t feel like I’d worked out enough
So I made a right-hand turn and I wait to this little Palestinian Village which is very very much part of Israel it’s really part of western Israel these days um called ba Safa and that’s very hilly so I was riding in there and then all of
A sudden in my helmet I hear this really weird sound and I couldn’t make out what it was and it didn’t go away I thought it was my phone but it wasn’t my phone it wasn’t my watch so I actually pulled over and I took off my helmet and it’s the air raid
Siren and I thought son of a gun they’re actually really doing it so you’re supposed to lie on the side and put your hands over your head and I thought you know that’s just ridiculous but I was in this Arab Village and people are looking at me like buddy you’re in the wrong
Place because you’re not coming in our house but you really shouldn’t be outside so I just figured you know the likelihood that anything’s going to happen to me is basically 0.0 I rode home I got quite the look for my wife of course and then I said to myself you
Know self if you don’t start a substack today admit to yourself you’re never going to do it and I thought yeah that’s a pretty good so by the end of the day I’d sent out a substack and there was a lot of news about Israel because that
Was a beginning of unfortunately one of the regular kerfuffles with and Hamas and people unfortunately do get attracted to that but I made it very clear from the beginning this is not going to be about war and this is not going to be about politics and I started
To write about poetry and about Israeli novels and about Fascinating People who are doing unbelievable things in Israeli Society I mean the the kind of social action work that people do is really unbelievable so and you’d also you you get a kind of a you get a different
Angle so I interviewed an Israel an Israeli Arab woman who unfortunately since passed away she drowned but um an unbelievably powerfully engaging personality who was working really hard to help Arab kids get into the Israeli high-tech sector um and they needed extra help they needed an interview preparation they needed CV preparation
They just needed help and she built an amazing program and she’s had tremendous success I interviewed a woman for example who um also she went to she went to the techon which is kind of Israel’s MIT um and she and her husband obviously both Israeli Arabs and Muslim Israeli
Arabs when they graduated decades ago you really couldn’t get a job in Israeli Tech if you were an Arab because it was all security related um and his father had given them three gold coins when they got married and said put these away for a rainy day in case God forbid you
Know keep these coins and they sold the coins and they opened up a business which is now the world’s leading business in brain mapping um and so if you’re have brain surgery in the United States what the doctors are looking to see inside your brain is developed by
These two Israeli Arabs who live in Nazareth and obviously a huge company now it’s just a great story or there was a story of this uh um an organization called the road to recovery there was an Israeli man whose brother had been killed actually by a by a terror attack near
Gaza and he was obviously devastated and one day somebody he knew a bunch of Arabs and and one Arab said to him I need a ride to a hospital can you maybe give me a ride I have to get you know whatever procedure or injection or dialysis whatever it was
And he driving him and he thought wow this is the way to honor my brother’s life and he built an entire organization where now now it’s not happening right now but in general thousands of Israelis each week pick up Palestinians either from the West Bank or if they’ve gotten
Permission from Hamas to come across the border now it’s not happening but normally it does and drive them to a certain hospital and then there’s an app and it’s set up some other Israeli picks you up and drives you back to your village so you don’t have to navigate
The Israeli transportation system you don’t have to worry how am I going to get back uh and the person that I interviewed for this was a settler I mean and he was really out of you know Central casting a big kipa the beard lives in gion who drives almost every
Day for these people and I I remember saying to him like really you don’t kind of fit and he said well why not you know why does everybody think that I don’t fit I just I am right-wing I think these lands should be ours but I don’t want
Palestinians to suffer I want them to have lives of nobility and I have all sorts of theories about how we can make that happen but in the meantime they need to get to a hospital I’m retired the religious kibuts lets me use the car to drive them around and I just thought
These are the kinds of things that people just never hear so for me the substack has really kind of been a wonderful Odyssey when you have to come up with a podcast every week you start asking around and talking to people and really meeting incredible men
Women Israelis and Arabs I mean Jews and Arabs and and religious and secular and young and old and immigrants and Natives and I was doing it fairly consistently there was a written column once a week and there was a podcast once a week and it was chugging along quite nicely
Wasn’t competing with Andrew Sullivan or Barry Weiss in terms of readership but that was totally fine it was never about that and then October 7th happened and um it became clear to me very quickly that we were going through something here that you cannot understand if
You’re not here um even by the way if you read Hebrew and you speak Hebrew and you follow all the news you can’t so I have a son who lives in Santa Monica in Los Angeles he grew up here his Hebrews completely fluent he went to college here university did his whatever he’s
Israeli Israeli happens to be living right now in in Santa Monica and a couple weeks after the war started he wrote us and he said I’m coming over I think he was worried about us and you know not physically but he was worried that it was very stressful it’s very sad
It’s still very sad um and you know he’s been reading listening to the Israeli news all day long on his computer on you know online and he got here and he was here for about two days and he said ABA I knew every single thing that was
Happening even before I got here I had no idea how broken this country is he said you just can’t feel it and what I’ve been trying to do over the course of these tragic 117 days so far and um I know the number because uh HS Goldberg
Poland’s mother has asked us all to put um masking tape and the number on our on our shirt every day so on my desk is the masking tape and the pen and so every day when I come down in the morning and I write a new number it’s a reminder that that’s one
More day that those people have been there and it’s one more day that those people’s parents and siblings and spouses and children are living through an unbelievable hell um so I actually wrote a piece about that little thing with the tape which I actually find you know very powerful and very painful and
What I’ve been trying to do for these last hundred 17 days I don’t put something out every day certainly not on Shabbat and very often not on Fridays but I’d say four or five pieces go out a week and as you said a lot of these are
Clips and um we can come back to that but I’ve been trying to show what’s going on in the Israeli press what’s going on in social media you know what goes viral on Twitter on Instagram um I have a very young person who works with me otherwise I have no
Idea what goes on on Instagram but she’s excellent and she finds me all this fabulous stuff and she the one that does the Translating and the subtitling so this is stuff that if you don’t read Hebrew a you won’t know that it’s there and be you you wouldn’t have access to
It so we been trying to as we call it Israel from the inside what do you get if you speak the language and you get the newspaper and you’re on all these Twitter accounts uh what are you going to hear about what’s happening to the soul of this country in what is without
Question the worst year that it’s ever had in its history um what are you gonna possibly what can I do to kind of open up a little window for you the reader um that’s what I’ve been trying to do and uh the response has been positive you
Know it’s getting a lot more readers um but to me what matters is giving it giving people who do care access to some of the soul of this country that otherwise even with the fabulous English Publications that are out there um one of which obviously you work for and it’s
Terrific um thank you you just wouldn’t you wouldn’t be able to you wouldn’t be able to have access I’m trying to open up that window and let people peek in a little bit yeah no thank well thank you for thank you for telling all all those stories to
Start with but that and I I just I’m glad you segue to that because that’s really I mean to me sitting here you know not being in Israel that often um I’m fascinated by this um Gap you identified which you’re not the obviously not the first person to notice
This but even from a from the narrower political point of view there’s a um i’ I’ve heard descriptions of a mediascape where really even like so anglophone journalists right in America or even in Israel they they go around and they talk to anglophone sources right and they read anglophone versions of Israeli
Newspapers even um you know in this household you know we read hararat English every day and I have been told that that’s actually not even uh that close of Correspondence to what’s appearing in har Israel it’s a completely different newspaper it’s a there is translation of some but it’s a
Different newspaper altogether and it’s I’m not exaggerating it’s probably 5% of what’s in the regular harat on a weekday and much less than that on the weekend because har like the others like the New York Times or the Washington Post is a batch of stuff um
So yeah you get a little bit of a glimpse but it’s really not a real glimpse so I mean can you I don’t want to take this entirely political because obviously your whole intention is to get away from that so so I apologize but um
I I have heard I can’t remember if this was your specific critique or that of others but the the effect of that is that um anglophone readers get access to certain parts of Israel in great depth but what about can you quickly characterize the parts of Israel that
They’re not having any access to I mean who are the people who are you know I mean right so so look I mean so first of all let me say about since you mentioned politics um you can’t not talk about politics during the judicial reform era
You just can’t U but what I made sure to do was I interviewed mosha Capel who works for the calet Forum who was the author basically of the proposed judicial reform which I was personally very much opposed to and I made it very clear that I was personally opposed to
It but we also live in these bubbles right and other words so you say in this house we read hit.com um and you know that would be my household also if we were living in the States but I also think that in general there’s got nothing to do with the Jewish world has
Everything to do with the modern technological world we follow the people on Twitter that we agree with and we follow people whatever so we live in these Echo Chambers and I purposely wanted to break out of the echo chamber so mosha happens to be a wonderful human
Being and a friend so even though I disagree with him passionately about judicial reform he’s also brilliant so when I would interview him um I didn’t agree but you’re listening to a very very very smart smart guy and then the very next week I interviewed the assistant dean of the Barry Lon law
School who was one of the leaders of the opposition to it and they both sat you know they’re in the archive anybody can go and listen to them it was important to me to be aware of Israeli politics but not to be overtly political in the
Sense that even if people knew what I thought I was going to bring in lots of different viewpoints and I’ve tried to do that ever since and one of the things people write and they say is um you know there’s things that I love and there’s
Things that I hate and I write okay then it’s working because it’s exactly what I want if you don’t want to read it don’t read it you don’t want to listen don’t listen but I want there to be a central place where you can get the entire the
Look I’m not gonna bring in a rabid racist and I’m not gonna probably bring in some crazy wacko from the other side who doesn’t no I’m not gonna do that but within the normal spectrum of people I want people to see how how vibrant the the culture is here politically and
Culturally now what are you not going to get so shortly after October 7th um David Grossman um who’s now that Amos o has passed away then I would say was the two of them but nowos is unfortunately no longer here um David grman is unquestionably Israel’s leading novelist
But also very politically active um his son was perhaps the very last Soldier killed in the second Lebanon war and um he refused to shake Al Mer’s hand when he got an award it was a huge brew HaHa but David David Gman is about as much of
A poet as a person can be especially for a person that writes pros and um he gave a speech about what had happened to our soul after October 7th it wasn’t immediate it was maybe a week or two later um and in the speech he mentioned
Two poems by beik and two poems by Kim gurri balik everybody’s heard of Kim gurri most people outside of Israel have not heard of but he was just as famous here as as beik but I had already covered those poems so when I covered the thing that Grossman wrote We
Translated it and then we kind of hyperlink to other places where I had already taught some of those poems as they came up in other contexts so I wanted people to see that there is you know if somebody gets up in America and say I have a
Dream right all is I have a dream but you and I are thinking about the same exact thing right and I if I say to you we have nothing to fear I don’t even have to say but fear itself you already know who I’m talking about that’s how a civilization works and Israelis
Civilization and Jewish civilization French civilization German I mean they all they all work that way um but if one read if I had just taken the the David Grossman thing put it into Google translate gotten it back corrected the mistakes which obviously Google was going to make that’s fine and then
Posted it okay I mean it’s better than nothing but where I think the contribution of Israel from the inside is to try to give a little bit of a commentary when he says this he’s referring to this and when he says that he’s referring to that so what you’re
Not going to get is um you’re not going to get the the the major Israeli intellectuals and artists with words um talking internally to Israelis in a language not only that it’s Hebrew but a language with associations that only Israelis are going to get look there were also unbelievable stories of
Heroism on October 7th uh and since and there have been unbelievable tragedies I mean be be tragedies Beyond descript um some of those make their way into the Israeli press but here’s where the clips come in I mean some of these um there was a story that I put up about a guy
Named arzel who I’ve known for years um who actually runs a m runs a program for 18y old kids before the Army it’s a whole Israeli phenomenon we’ve actually done a thing about we did a podcast about the whole mahina phenomenon but he hears on October 7th
What’s happening and he grabs his gun and he grabs an 18-year-old kid who’s never served a day in the Army and he saysyou coming with me and he gives the kid a gun and they race down in ares’s car to the oot to the Gaza envelope and
They actually pick up bodies and join the battle I mean it’s insane so first of all in America nobody takes an 18-year-old kid and drags them into a gun battle you just don’t well yeah no you have them unfortunately at stadiums and theaters and and God forbid if it did happen you get
Fired you get fired for taking a kid into a battle and here the kid talked about how now he knows what he wants to do with his life he wants to devote it to Israel it was just a fascinating thing so we translated it um and we put
It up so that was a kind of a crazy story but there are there there are really these unbelievably powerful stories both in terms of Bravery but also unbelievably sad um and the Israeli press is brilliant I mean Israeli TV is as worldclass as American TV or whatever
I mean they’re really the they’re the tops but that I one of I don’t mean to interrupt you but I just one of the clips that I that I I was particularly struck by was early shortly after October 7th when you ran a clip of a um
A newscaster from one of the more right-wing stations a commentator and he had been so shaken to his core by what had happened that he on air and he declared that all Israelis from henceforth were his brothers and sisters and that he was not going to uh lob
Nasty insults at people on the left um you know like people apparently they they’d spent a a lot of time insulting shikma Bressler you know the leader right and and and one of his and his colleague and he went on about this for some time and you you had the the um the
Subtitles and then um one of his colleagues comes on and makes a crack about shikma wrestler Co or a Marxist or something um and and this guy goes insane and starts screaming at his colleague and says you’re never coming on this show again I’m you’re dead to me
You don’t understand get off get off the set get out of the get off the set get off right now um and and I was just I mean first of all that’s a amazing thing to see it gives you a sense um I mean really among other things of how
Stretched everybody stretched thin everybody is that they they’re gonna go do that have those kinds of extreme emotional reactions at all but also on the air um So that obviously really stuck in my mind but I’m also that speaks to a moment that I bet is no
Longer really um the um I mean would that happen today this idea oh there all we’re all Brothers never a never a never a cruel word again about someone on the other side has that lasted it’s interesting um I just posted a thing I think within the last few days there was
Three videos I forget when it went out sometime last week um of young people and one of them specifically said we can never go back to that toxic discourse um and he was talking about that so a lot I think in the younger generation especially there is a real desire to
Look we came this close to Civil War I mean we really did U when Yak Herzog who is by no means you know a blowhard he’s the exact opposite I mean he’s moderate and thoughtful and just a wonderful human being um you know my wife pointed
Out when we were in his office if you ago for something unrelated um he had the pictures of his kids on the window sill and then in identical frames and identical sizes all the way down the window sill other Israeli soldiers missing um and elisheva said to me look
At that they’re all in the same they’re all as kids and I hadn’t noticed it and you know you just go into the president’s office and so Herz is just an exceptional human being and when he says we’re at at the edge and we’re we’re heading towards Civil War if you
Don’t stop this um then you know it’s serious because he’s just not one of these people who tends to you know be hyperbolic in in any way um and so for example I put up a clip so I think yes I think that people in the younger generation understand that we came this
Close and then don’t forget the people that were on opposite sides of this judicial reform thing we’re in the same tank and we’re in the same tank sometimes for 90 days it’s not a lot of room at a tank you sleep in the tank you actually don’t often always leave the
Tank for your personal needs you might have to deal with that in the tank uh you eat in the tank you’re scared to death together in the tank um prob yeah so these battalions aren’t um politically aren’t selected um no not not at all not at all and and people
Have come out and said look These Guys these guys just defending me we have a thing coming up in the next few days of uh it’s it’s it’s an unbelievable when I actually it moved me very much it hasn’t been we haven’t finished the subtitling
Yet so it’s not out yet but a guy who’s he calls himself a Bast you know he’s like a hardcore BB guy um and he said I voted BB always and I’m Gonna Keep voting BB okay whatever very badly wounded in the in the war burnt all over
Whatever um is speaking from the hospital bed about a friend of his who’s a pilot and uh you know the pilots were the lefties in the judicial reform thing they said that they’re not going to whatever so we had this very close friend they’ve been friends forever
Since early childhood when they grew up in the periphery but as they got older and their politics began to differ they began to be stressful and during judicial reform stuff they basically said this has gotten so toxic we’re not going to talk to each other and they
Literally stop talking and then this guy says we’re in the we’re we’re on the ground below and what these Pilots are doing to protect us is be other words the soldiers are in touch with the helicopter pilots and the helicopter will say there’s a sniper over there be
Careful move back 10 yards 10 meters or whatever and they do and then this the guy will say they’re shooting from that window in that building and the helicopter will turn around and come back and send the missile in in other words it’s a very carefully choreographed thing which didn’t used to
Exist because the technology wasn’t there but now there is and this guy was living on the verge of tears he said I wouldn’t be alive if not for those Pilots so how did it get to the point that I wasn’t talking to this guy and
This guy says I heard he was wounded the minute I could get away from my unit I went to the hospital to visit him and they both said we we can’t go back to that we just never ever ever can go back to that now does that mean that every
Israeli politician is going to turn into sugar and spice and all things nice no I mean look yesterday they had a conference of um Israeli political leaders who want to resettle Gaza now by the way if we were having a debate I could take that argument and make a very
Compelling case I’m not personally in favor of it but it’s not as insane as people think it’s uh very problematic but it’s not say it’s not because I mean it was settled before and there were millions of Gins there um you know and they lived Separate Lives sort of but
They were getting killed and so soldiers were getting killed actually not settlers and that’s why Sheron pulled out but I mean it’s not it sounds like a crazy crazy crazy idea it’s not as insane as it sounds but it was the wrong time to have a conference about that and yesterday
They literally kind of in this religious fervor were dancing and that’s what went around Israeli social media today you know guys are literally getting shot and killed a half an hour drive from here and you’re dancing like what is wrong with you I don’t expect Ben ver to change I don’t
Expect smart Rich to change and I don’t expect nanyu for sure to change what what I do really believe there’s a possibility here there’s a possibility that this younger gener genertion which was so shocked by how we came this close to tearing each other apart and how all
It took was one day and then they’re in the sky and they’re in the tanks obviously the tanks is a few weeks later but you you get my point um they their lives depend on each other and they understand now that our lives really do depend on each other and it’s those kind
Of Clips where so that that’s just never going to make it to America first of all to watch a 30 or 20 minute interview nobody’s going to do it nobody’s going to subtitle it so that’s what we’re trying to do here and I think that when
You re when you watch that it gives you great hope that this younger generation really might start something new um you think Israel can wait that long well first of all we may not have a choice second of all when I’d say Young Generation they’re not 14 they’re
Reservists they’re in their 30s they’re married their parents they’re professionals um a lot of the people dying are are are husbands and fathers this is not only 18 and 19 year old kids God forbid not to minimize the trag of that but I’m just saying when people say
I’m getting out of the tank and I’m going to go change the country they’re out of the army they’re out of University they’re they’re they’re ready to rock and roll so I think Israel doesn’t have to wait all that long and I think if one doesn’t have faith that that can
Happen then you might as well pack up and go somewhere and I don’t know where you would go the world’s not that hospitable to people like us but whatever but if you don’t believe that there’s some chance of that happening then I don’t know how you would get out
Of bed in the morning here you have to you have to believe that it’s possible and you have to believe that a lot of these young people that we watching and seeing are going to be transformed by the horror of what’s unfolding here um this is a very broken country it’s it’s
Really as my son said it’s really hard to understand if you’re not here the the the Brokenness I mean um you know there’s a little field well not a field it’s a it’s a playground right around the corner for my house which is where arul davin’s
When it when we D outside which we do sometimes and um I have two very Vivid memories of I’ve been there hundreds of times but I have two very Vivid memories of being in worship um on that playground you know his seats set up on the whole thing the first was on Tish
Which was three days after the knesset passed the chain to the reasonability clause which everybody saw is the beginning of the actual enactment of the judicial reform reason yeah the reasonability clause on shab on the sixth of of and all these signs went out the six the I
Even posted some of them and on this playground on Tish you don’t sit in chairs you sit on the ground we got there everybody’s done Tish before everybody knows the drill people sat on the ground and they wept I never seen this in my life adults
In their 30s and their 40s most of them much younger than me literally crying about a a vote in the knesset because they understood we’re this close we are this close um you know that was August I guess right and then in October on October 7th it was Sim T we’re
Sitting outside because it was gorgeous and we hear all these booms and what could that possibly be and people are kind of a little nervous but they’re mostly kidding with each other oh you know somebody’s having a birthday party whatever and then of course the sirens go off and
Okay and then the sirens went off again later in the morning and then we understood okay something’s going on and then it’s a mixed neighborhood so there’s enough people with their phones on and their TVs on you begin to hear what’s going on and nobody knew anyway
What was going on my point is if you’re just walking by that playground um you know I’ll never be able to walk by that playground and not think of October 7th and I’ll never be able to walk by that playground and not think of Tish and there’s the resonance
Here to place and time and and music you know we did something as I’m as you probably saw about this song the winter of 73 which was redone several times and in its newest form it’s the the the the children or you know supposedly the
Young people of the fall of 23 um you know 50 years later done by their teachers thanking them and and lating them and so on and so forth and it’s just there’s parts of this country that you can’t get um if you don’t have this
Access and if you do have that access I think it’s very hard not to have some hope here so can Israel wait that long I don’t think it’s going to be that long um how this is going to play out politically is very hard to see uh but
You can see the political temperature beginning to rise there was a kind of an informal moratorium on politics but BB announced tonight I mean it’s dinner it was dinner time here right before I got on with you U and my wife and I were sitting at the table you know having
Dinner together and of course looking at our phones and um and BB just announced today we are not doing a deal where we give back thousands of Palestinian terrorists and pull the soldiers out and go Hamas has said that’s the only deal that there is on the table now if Hamas
Is serious and if bib is serious and he then he just consigned all those hostages to death now maybe that’s the right military move I’m not a military person so I don’t know but that’s that’s hard I mean there are there are parents there are parents of a hostage in our
Sh um to be in sh with them is just beyond um but that that’s what I thought of immediately in fact they sit in this tent outside the prime minister’s house and there’s a Google sheet where they don’t want to be alone so they ask
People to sign up to come and sit with them so my wife and I are on at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning just to go sit with them for an hour and then somebody else will they shouldn’t be alone um but if I was them and I read the news
Tonight so my government is my government is now abandoning my child um you need to I don’t want to get into politics very quickly on on on Israel from the inside but at a certain point there’s going to be no choice if one is going to give people a window in the
Claim we’re not we’re not you know making a deal like that it’s about this couple in my SCH who live a 10-minute walk from here whose kid nobody has any idea what the story with him is um soone trying to give an a a a a bit of that
Also so I think we we are going to get political I think the moratorium is beginning to wear thin also the war is becoming a slog I mean this notion that we’re gonna wipe out Kamas and we’re gonna get all the hostages back that was the original PL promise from both the
Military and political Islam and not looking terribly likely that either of those is going to happen the way we thought um and so again what I’m trying to do in those from the inside is give people what happens when people say something like that what happens when we
Realize we may not get any of the hostages back listening to the news in the car two days ago on a woman whose relative is a hostage she said look we know some of the things that are being done to women there every day like it’s happening day and day and day and
Day um and apparently the way they know this is because they are tracking the cell phones of these Kamas guys who keep going back to this same spot every day or every other day why would they possibly be going back there so there’s these theories about what they’re up to
Which is beyond horrifying Beyond horrifying um they can track these guys by their cell phones and they can’t get them wow well they’re they’re surrounded they could be underneath the ground they could be surrounded by hostages we know where sinir apparently is exactly but in any event but why don’t I mention this
Because then this woman says on the radio we’re running out of time for these hostages also because a lot of them are going to need abortions and that that was my case also Al I was driving and I’m like I never thought of that how did I not think of
That um and she said how many of the the hostages who are still in there are female because a lot of people a lot I don’t know the exact number but it do yeah but it’s not just they’re young they’re young they’re not five years old but they’re not 85 years
Old they’re you know 20s 30s so you you hear something like that on the radio and my my question to myself as I was driving always is I didn’t do anything with this particular one but people outside Israel need to understand that that’s what’s on the
Radio here like I didn’t put that piece in for whatever reason but but that’s what I want people to get from Israel from the inside I want them to know you’re driving along you’re waiting to make a left-hand turn and this woman I can Vision right where I was and and and
This woman says that and you realize how did I never think of that like what’s wrong with me how did I never think that there’s women in there it’s 117 days that’s three point something months yeah we got to get them out really fast um and you know there’s all sorts of
Stories here about the women who were brought out and and what their mental condition is and there’s rumors you know trying to take their own lives after they got out I mean there’s horrible stories here and I don’t want to I don’t want Israel from inside to be a
Depressing thing that’s why I put in lots of really unbelievably positive and optimistic stuff but it’s complicated and I want people to feel the Resonance of the complexity so I was going to ask you this earlier I don’t know if we want to end on this note because it’s a it’s
A I was going to ask you about comedy because some of the things you’ve put on that have been most you you you often say on the substack that you know you can’t really understand a country unless you understand what they’re all laughing at on the news and those BBC parodies
You know things like that so can you do that really quickly and then I want to ask you we we’re almost out of time but I kind of wanted to ask you just take a step back and talk about your own Journey because you crossed this bridge
You know as an adult not as a child to become an Israeli so can you do both those things in you know five minutes less I’ll do it less than five minutes we put a thing out today on today’s podcast I interviewed a young woman who happens to be a graduate of shalam
College where I work but she is herself now an attorney um and she and some other people built an organization to represent the needs of the women who are at home to the keset so it’s ex that I didn’t know until I talked to her if
You’re a nurse she’s not but if you’re a nurse and you work night shifts and now your husband’s away and you can’t work night shift because your kids need somebody at home so you work the day shift that’s a 60% cut in your salary because they pay a lot more for the
Night shift now who’s thinking about that who’s thinking about you’re also trying to keep your husband’s business going and if you’re gonna go try to meet your husband because he’s getting five hours off and they do that sometimes you go meet him wherever he is who’s taking
Care of your kids and all of that kind of stuff so I interviewed her today about this organization called the wives of reservists Etc and we put that up today she’s she’s wonderfully thoughtful and articulate but I wanted people this woman so we put up a thing from ER the
Hader about these women singing this song it’s very cute um and it’s about basically we’ve had enough the first two days it was great to be without our husbands and then it started to be not so much fun and now they say in this song If you guys don’t get senoir we’re
Gonna go get him right and it’s obviously and they show these women Marching In with helicopters over them um and that’s just the way of saying if it’s on erit neret then obviously the whole society is thinking about this it’s not just this one woman or the 15 women who are
Organizing this this organization I wanted to show the humor because the fact that it makes it to the equivalent of Saturday Night Live it’s more or less Israel Saturday Night Live if it’s the first skin on Saturday Night Live that it’s something everybody’s thinking about um you know when they did a kanuka
They did a kanaka thing and the kanuk had like you know 30 candles in it 30 spaces and then somebody says what are you doing and the guy says he’s dressed up as the as the um I think I think it was Galant the defense the defense
Minister who goes well I promised Biden we’d be out by the end of kanaka you know so there’s this you know kanuk that has 30 days and it obviously gone long since that but these humor things I mean is Ries are laughing also because because you have to and the country is
Very broken people burst out into tears at the drop of something when we heard about these 21 guys who were killed in this building um I was at work today talking to a woman who two of the families are from her neighborhood and she was telling me how she responded two
Weeks ago or last week whenever it was and she she she teared up just to at the office I mean there’s plenty of pain to go around but the country is also trying to live you know my wife and I went to a chamber music concert last week because
You have to live and in a certain way by the way the people at the front are doing what they’re doing so we can live so the humor is important window um what was the second part I apologize um no so actually I think so we’re you can you
Can answer this at more leader so I was I was just I wanted to ask you um oh my own personal Journey let me let me let me ask it more more elaborately um I mean this is all about you know cross not not being able to see across the
Divide and I went back and I I also uh reread in preparation for this year 2019 book um we stand divided about the uh the fundamental divides between American Jews and Israeli Jews and I have to say although it it’s from a different Universe it kind of it holds up pretty
Well um unfortunately think that it does yeah yeah but but I mean you you made Aliah as an adult you know you already had a career and a PhD and a family um and you’ve obviously you know gone all the way over so tell me can can you talk
About that a little bit I mean first of all why you know why you why you made Aliah but secondly I know you wrote a whole book about this it just it’s just a w but also secondly like is there a point when you felt okay I’m a real
Israeli now I’m not an American anymore I’m looking at this as an Israeli does uh so yes we made Aliah because my want my wife wanted to make Aliah that’s the short but also 100% true version of the story there obviously more to it but we don’t have time she’d always wanted to
Live here we came for a sabatical she loved it uh we moved around a bit for my career she really wanted to give it a shot it was her turn and I wasn’t passionate about the idea but I wasn’t opposed to the idea our kids were thriving on that sabatical I said okay
We’ll give it a shot and I obviously over the course of time really fell in love with the place and our lives here and so forth um you know we’ve been here for we’ve been here for a quarter of a century all of our kids have done the
Army all of our kids went to University here um you know we pay the Hefty taxes that everybody else pays but I think in a certain way we became Israelis now um because I was actually walking down the stairs from work coming home just today I had this thought you
Know my son’s out right now um and he’s going back in soon um and it’s very scary and you can’t feel sorry for yourself because there’s hundreds of thousands of families who feel the same exact way um but then I had this thought you know if you’d stayed in
La your your kid would not be going back in and he would not be worried about whether or not his two young children God forbid would remember him I had this crazy thought walking down the stairs and that’s when I said to myself that’s that’s when you’re in the boat um so
When he was in the Army it was everybody bued the Army and it was relatively peaceful and what he did was dangerous but we weren’t it wasn’t like this and um I just had that thought today you know I can’t I can’t keep him out and he
Would never not go in if he was asked to go in um but it’s very very frightening and I think in a certain kind of a way you know the question everybody asks is these days not how are you which they do ask but how many do you have in that’s
The question how many do you have we have friends who at five in combat in Gaza at exactly the same time how they functioned because we only had one in and we were we were just not we were zombies walking around the house looking at each other kind of talking to each
Other pretending to read but not really focusing on anything and not sleeping for sure um so when you have that kid in and he’s the father of two very young kids and you just got to defend this place ironic 25 years in I thought on the way out of
Work today walking down the stairs it’s real so I mean if you would asked me this question yesterday I would have had a different answer but it literally happened like three or four hours ago when I was coming home from work wow wow that’s it’s it’s h thank
You for thank you for sharing that that can’t be easy um even to share it never mind to experience it but so so I mean you know in some way okay let’s I think we don’t have a lot of questions but we have one or two so
Far let’s go to that and then if we have a little more time I’ll come back I have lots of questions of course let me let me let me just say how much I appreciate you’re coming on and and talking and you know we we do um one of the things I
Took away from your book was that um you know having having being having differences uh might make it hard to communicate but understanding that they’re there makes it easier so focusing on on the Gap is makes it easier to to disc to um make make a
Bridge so so with that in mind let’s see if we got some questions thank you thank you thank you both so much um h a few people have asked uh what do Israelis know about what’s going on here in the United States kind of the reverse uh do
They know how much uh an the rise of anti-Semitism what’s happening on campuses um and especially uh with all the pro Palestinian rallies and calling for for intifa um how much do they know and how much does it affect them do they care when they’re in the middle you’re
In the middle of what you’re doing right now it’s a great question um in the 25 years that I’ve lived here I have never seen so much coverage of American Judaism um when claudin gay became president of Harford University I doubt very much that she thought she would
Figure loudly in Israeli newspapers uh but there was her picture in Congress the word context you know being in in Brackets you know um heare is the Hebrew word but you know contextual people were explaining what it meant Israelis are actually brokenhearted about what’s happening in America they really can’t
Believe it they feel by the way very supported by American Jews right now I think how long that’s going to last is a very complicated question but it’s another time but they feel right now um very supportive people are coming in on missions people are going to farms and
Working and we we’ve been running an Airbnb it feels like I mean we’ve just had you know our guest room people leave we change the sheets another couple comes and they’re getting up and they’re going at 6 o’clock in the morning they’re going to Farms they’re not
Hanging out and going to restaurants and can I just say that um there’s a group I’m loosely associated with a group that has been raising um money specifically for those women that you talked about and who who need support with families so you know there’s there’s a certain
Amount of information you know going back and forth but go on so Israelis feel very very supported I was meeting with a student today about something he just got out of Gaza he looked at me and he said I am telling you every single thing that I wore the pants the socks
Well not the pants but the the boots the socks the vest it was all bought by American jewes he said none of us in Gaza took that for granted by the way that’s a huge problem that you need people from a different country to buy your soldiers their equipment that’s a
Huge issue we obviously have a few military issues to clean up here over the course of time but people feel really unbelievably supported but even more than that they feel brokenhearted what American Jews are going through um they really it’s in the press all the time it’s been covered um they’re very
Concerned not out of a selfish way they just feel whatever the complexities of this relationship have been for years and it’s been very complex and not always pretty um those are Jews and they are living through their own horbor right now there’s a tremendous sympathy concern and a lot more knowledge than
There was four months ago and and what about um these Pro Palestinian uh rallies that are taking place calling for excuse me calling for intifa from people who are living in the United States and not even living in Israel look Israelis understand that I mean Israelis love to see these American
Social media Clips where there’s somebody in Manhattan I just one of them we didn’t translate it because it’s in English so we didn’t it wasn’t our wasn’t our thing but um there’s a woman holding a Palestinian flag somewhere in Manhattan you can just tell because of the taxis that it’s Manhattan and she’s
Saying from the from the from the mountains to the Sea Palestine will be free so a guy goes up to with a microphone and says which mountains and she’s thinking and she goes oh no no The River To The Sea and um he says okay
Which river and she has no idea right I mean in other words people understand here this is actually not about Israel at all this is about Jews and um anti-Semitism like a virus and we all know virus metaphors now because of covid virus is morph but they don’t
Usually go away and so if anti-Semitism at one point is based on theology in the middle in the Middle Ages and then under Nazism it’s based on pseudo science um it’s now based on nationalism or anti-nationalism or that sort of thing but it’s the same hate it’s the same
Exact hate and the same exact hate that made Jews Fleet before the Holocaust that got Jews to flee Europe and go either to the Lower East Side or to Palestine that’s the hate on the campuses of Harvard and Columbia and the streets of New York and Los Angeles Israelis Israelis get that um
There’s no I told you so and there’s no well now that you get it there’s none of that none of that but there is I think a deep-seated sense that those early Zionist thinkers were right they were right that this hatred does not know borders and beik himself said to
American Jews you think it’s all good and Rosy over there I think it was his words I forget it was but you will be drinking one day from the same trough that we’re drinking from um wrote it 10 10 years ago uh 20 years it’s so it’s a very strong
Statement but it’s tragically not ridiculous and so I think people here understand it’s really at the end of the day not about Israel um it’s about Jews and it’s old it’s thousands of years old and it’s never going to go away doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to fight it we
Should although I’m not sure how but that’s another conversation for a different day um they’re very concerned and they’re very they’re very aware of what’s going on both um in all of the ways Suzanne that you asked about and and as we wrap up um a lot of people
Want to know what can American Jews be doing um not being there uh how can we continue to support um what’s happening um in Israel and and the Israel people it’s a great question and look I understand from all of our friends and who are there that there’s a certain
Feeling of impotence that you really want to do something but at the end of the day I mean you’re not going to pick up an M16 and hop in a tank that you’re not going to do right um so look I think there are certain obvious things there are amazing organizations that need
Support there’s a I’ll just give you one right Ogen is this is an organization which we’re going to profile in is we’re from the inside shortly um which is actually trying to give short-term loans to businesses that are floundering because their owners and workers are you
Know in tanks and they’re going to come back and their their their their stock is going to be ruined and they won’t have sold anything and so they’re giving shortterm loans that I mean so money does matter money doesn’t go in just to a huge Heap um you know kutser can have
To be rebuilt and some of it the government will do but some of it won’t so money really does matter and I think we’re going to cover in isra from the inside shortly some of the kinds of things that are sort of out of the norm but that really deserve because they’re
Very they’re they’re serious organizations the money is not being wasted um and it’s making a difference we’re going to cover that so Money Matters as I said earlier the presence of people here for those who can do it and obviously not everybody can uh really does mean a lot to Israelis it’s
The only people other than the evacuees who are in the who are in the hotels and I I went to the states for a day last weekend I was talking to my taxi driver he said there’s nobody because the evacuees are not using taxis so the
Hotels might not look empty but as far as taxi drivers are concerned it’s empty so people being here does make a difference I think being vocal about support which was not easy not easy in America I think Israelis will feel now like like we know that you’re actually making yourself if not physically
Vulnerable certainly emotionally vulnerable and socially vulnerable maybe even professionally vulnerable I don’t know um but to be out there on the front lines with us this is about the Jewish people uh this was not only about Israel this was a program and you didn’t need to do the horrible thing you could have
Just killed everybody but you didn’t need to mutilate them and do things that I won’t even mention now it was about debasing the Jew it wasn’t about taking over territory it was about debasing the Jew and that’s what programs were what were they trying to accomplish they weren’t trying to steal their Villages
Or their money or their things or their houses they wanted to debase them um and that’s where we are we’re back where we were in 1881 we’re back where we were in you know 1904 in kishinev um and so for American Jews to say no we get what this
Is about and we’re going to be on the front lines you want have a Palestinian protest go right ahead well we’re going to be on the other side we’re going to be polite we’re not going to break the law but we’re going to make it clear and
Here’s maybe we end end with this this is at the end of the day not about the Jews this is about the West if you cannot defend the right of people this is not to say that the Palestinians don’t have a legitimate cause RIT large this is not about that this is about
Rape and murder and burning people alive that’s got nothing to do with the Palestinian cause and it’s got nothing to do with Islam I hope this is about something much sicker it’s an extension of Isis as an it it’s an exp extension of boo Haram it’s an extension of Al
Qaeda if the West gives into this there’s no future for the West we are the proverbial Canary in the coal mine and if the West cannot stand up for Israel not because Israel’s always right and not because you know is the Jewish state has always comported itself the
Way it should because no country does um and not because you love us just because in this particular moment it really actually is without diminishing the suffering of Palestinians in any way and it is massive suffering in Gaza massive but it actually at the end of the day is
About good versus evil and um if the West can’t stand with good then the West is over and if I was a Jew Living in America I would be countering those Pro Palestinian protesters in favor of Israel but mostly actually in favor of the future of the West in favor of the
Future of the world that I would hope that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren would still want to grow up in so there’s money there’s coming there’s protesting there’s political activism um sometimes I know that doesn’t feel like enough people feel they wish they could do more but
It’s a lot and um as I said Israeli Jews feel very supported right now by American Jews um and I hope and pray that we can maintain some of that even after God willing this crisis which is not going to be over so soon but whenever it is
Over um we can maintain we just like we learned in Israel we came this close to the abyss we came pretty close to the abyss between American Jews and Israel too uh let’s see if we can build some bridges that we weren’t thinking about building four months
Ago great thank you and on that note we do have to to wrap up um again uh Daniel’s substack is Israel from the inside I do want to say one person wrote in and said that they have been a subscriber for a while and it is absolutely superb and invaluable so I
Very ni encourage everybody to to go check it out I’ve put a a the link in the chat I will send a follow-up email that will include a link to this program that people can share as well as a link to the substack again please go to
Moment mag.com where you can sign up for this week’s program on Thursday about Yemen and others that are coming up in the coming weeks again thank you Daniel thank you Amy for this really good conversation and we’ll see everybody next time bye bye thank you both very
Much a pleasure to be with you we’ll be thinking of you thank you
3 Comments
This smug racist has no concept of the suffering of the people of Gaza ! That he feels bad for the economic problems of Israel because so many of his fellow citizen are busy committing genocide in Gaza is a great example of his understanding of what is happening .
fantastic interview!
waste of waste